Glossary

T

A common variety of decorative pendant borrowed from drapery motifs in the form of a knot with twisted cords or threads flaring out beneath it.

Telamon

Male caryatid. See also "Caryatid" and "Hermes".

Terracotta

Hard-baked pottery used in the decorative arts and as a building material that is usually of a red-brown clay, but may also be colored with paint or baked glaze.

Tin

A chemical element (symbol Sn). Tin is a silvery-gray soft metal, highly corrosion resistant and therefore was used to coat other metals such as iron and copper to prevent their oxidation.

Tole

French for "tin", tole is typically decorated with painting and the term has come to mean any painted metal.

Torchiere

A type of floor lamp equipped with a decorative glass or metal reflector bowl designed to throw light upward.

Trefoil

Latin for “three leaves”. In the decorative arts, it is any of a wide variety of three-lobed form of naturalistic foliage or abstract geometry.

Triglyph

A decorative device derived from ancient Greek architecture and consisting of the vertically channeled tablets of the Doric frieze.

Tudor

Period of English architecture and design during the reign of the House of Tudor from 1485 to 1603. Essentially Gothic in character, the style tends to be heavy, massive, and richly carved with ornamentation such as strapwork, half-timbering, inlay, and caryatids.

Turning

Decoration produced by rotating metal, wood, ivory, or other substances on a lathe and changing the shape by removing material.